Politics Weekly podcast: Jonathan Sperber on Karl Marx

Jonathan Sperber, author of Karl Marx: A 19th Century Life, joins Anne Perkins to discuss whether the man who wrote Das Kapital has anything to teach policymakers mired in present-day crises of capitalism

The economic crash of 2008 wiped out investors, sunk banks and brought down governments across the western world with a bump.

But in the bookshops that survived the slump, one book was flying off the shelves. Das Kapital - The Capital - a work by the 19th century economist and philosopher Karl Marx.

For his advocates, not only did Marx foresee the current crisis - his philosophy provides the only way out of it. But for Jonathan Sperber, the author of a new biography, Karl Marx: A 19th Century Life, things are not so simple.

Sperber argues that modern commentators are too keen to wrench the writings of Marx out of the specific 19th century context in which he worked. While his thought retains plenty we should be interested in, it must be treated carefully and its conclusions cannot be mapped exactly onto capitalist crises of the present day.

He joins Anne Perkins on the line from the University of Missouri in this exclusive interview with Politics Weekly to discuss how to interpret Marx, his lasting legacy, and where to look for his present-day equivalents.